Intriguing New Book

I saw the promos for Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer before and thought that it would be a book I should read, seeing that I am really interested in MGM. But I just read an excerpt from the book and some of the paragraphs made it sound like it might have a lot of old Hollywood gossip.

Louis B. Mayer, sitting in his office with white leather walls, a custom-designed wraparound desk, and an adjoining soundproof telephone room where he could consult with New York a half-dozen times a day, had a serious problem: He believed that his most popular young leading man was homosexual.

This issue had arisen before, when MGM had to finesse the fact that two of its top stars, William Haines and Ramon Novarro, were gay, but that had been more than fifteen years ago. The movie business had expanded exponentially since then -- weekly movie attendance had increased by a third, from 65 million in 1928 to 85 million in 1944. Now, there was more at stake.

Van Johnson had been handed the job of replacing Lew Ayres in the Dr. Kildare movies, then landed a supporting part in The Human Comedy. The fan mail had perked up, and the fan magazines were avid for interviews and photographs.

Johnson was an engaging personality, a competent actor. And he was an ex-chorus boy who was, claimed one MGM employee, "notorious on Broadway." Mayer knew it was only a question of time until MGM's money would have to be used to buy somebody's silence. The studio had done that be-fore, with William Haines, an experience Mayer had vowed he would never repeat.

For Louis B. Mayer, homosexuality was not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. As with many people of his time, Mayer believed that homosexuality was a psychological aberration that could be successfully treated -- especially by a good woman. As Mayer's suspicions about Johnson grew, he ordered every available, beautiful woman on the lot thrown at the young actor in an effort to establish his heterosexual bona fides.

Nothing.

But now there was a chance...

On April 1, 1943, during the production of A Guy Named Joe, Johnson had been badly hurt in an auto accident on Venice Boulevard and had spent a month or so recuperating at the home of his best friend, MGM character actor Keenan Wynn, the son of the legendary comedian Ed Wynn. While recuperating, Johnson had sparked to Evie, Keenan Wynn's vivacious, entertaining wife. He had told anybody who would listen about how sweet she had been to him after his accident, how he envied Keenan's taste in women. Word got back to Louis B. Mayer. Word always did. Ida Koverman, the dreaded Mount Ida, Mayer's executive secretary and protectress, sent a limousine for Evie Wynn.

How will it all end? (Of course, those of y'all who have paid attention during my Van Johnson biography review should know that Evie and Van did marry, whatever his proclivities might have been.) I'll have to find the book at work and write up a review of it.

FILE UNDER: Van Johnson

1. Sex and the Single Girl

Loosely based on the book of the same title, Sex and the Single Girl is a pretty innocent romp through the mores of the early 1960s, pre-sexual revolution. It features a trashy magazine writer named Bob (Tony Curtis) and his attempts to get the dirt on the writer of Sex and the Single girl for his magazine Stop. (Stop, incidentally, is run by a character played by Edward Everett Horton, a native Baltimorean!)The author and our heroine, Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood), is a psychologist. In order to find out more about Helen, Bob poses as his neighbor, Frank (Henry Fonda), a stocking manufacturer, who is having problems with his wife Sylvia (Lauren Bacall).

Essentially, the movie deals with many mistaken identities and the fact that Helen falls in love with Bob as Frank and think she loves a (gasp!) married man! Comedy ensues as she finds out that her Frank isn't the real Frank, and a madcap car chase to the airport ensues. Sylvia wants to apologize to Frank, Bob wants to apologize to Helen, Helen wants to go to Fiji with a co-worker (played by Mel Ferrer, definitely the more handsome of the two Ferrers!), the taxi drivers just want to get there, the motorcycle cop goes crazy, and Frank wants to escape to Hawaii -- but he's got a girl in the car with him! It all works out in the end and all the couples are coupled off accordingly.

Fairly entertaining and fluffy, but I will probably tape over this film. I'm not a huge fan of any of the stars -- except maybe a little amused by Mel Ferrer -- but it was pretty good.

FILE UNDER: 31 Films in 31 Days ; Classic Films

31 Films in 31 Days, Redux

It's a new Summer Under the Stars at TCM and I'm working on the same challenge as last year -- watch 31 films in 31 days and write up reviews of them. I think it should be a little more manageable this year, since I have now have high speed Internet.

I've got the tentative list of the 31 Films for August and they are as follows:

August 1 - Lauren Bacall - Sex and the Single Girl
August 2 - James Cagney - Angels with Dirty Faces
August 3 - Joel McCrea - Sullivan's Travels
August 4 - Alec Guiness - The Lavendar Hill Mob
August 5 - Katherine Hepburn - Holiday
August 6 - John Wayne - Red River
August 7 - Judy Garland - Thoroughbreds Don't Cry
August 8 - Shelley Winters - The Night of the Hunter
August 9 - Ray Milland - A Life of Her Own
August 10 - Lena Horne - Till the Clouds Roll By
August 11 - Kirk Douglas - Out of the Past
August 12 - Jane Wyman - Make Your Own Bed
August 13 - Cary Grant - Monkey Business
August 14 - Glenn Ford - The Courtship of Eddie's Father
August 15 - Fred Astaire - Silk Stockings
August 16 - Donna Reed - Faithful in My Fashion
August 17 - James Garner - 36 Hours
August 18 - Irene Dunne - Bachelor Apartment
August 19 - Marlon Brando - The Teahouse of the August Moon
August 20 - James Stewart - You Can't Take It with You
August 21 - Maureen O'Hara - Dance, Girl, Dance
August 22 - Joan Crawford - Possessed
August 23 - Basil Rathbone - The Dawn Patrol
August 24 - Sophia Loren - The Key
August 25 - Norma Shearer - Private Lives
August 26 - Randolph Scott - The Desperadoes
August 27 - Spencer Tracy - 20,000 Years in Sing-Sing
August 28 - William Holden - Rachel and the Stranger
August 29 - Constance Bennett - Bed of Roses
August 30 - Deborah Kerr - Tea and Sympathy
August 31 - Humphrey Bogart - One Fatal Hour

Let me say again, this is just a tentative list. It's already August 6 and I've only managed to watch two movies thus far, but I have a feeling this weekend I can knock off the ones from this week. So, here goes nothing!

Oh, and another sad note: Van Johnson didn't get a day to himself. How sad for poor Van. Oh well, he does pop up in a few films this month and I've scheduled myself to watch one with him in it -- Till the Clouds Roll By features both Van Johnson and Van Heflin. Awesome!!!

FILE UNDER: 31 Films in 31 Days ; News and Notes